P 51 Landing Gear

[granpa]

Question: Attaching the metal wire to the plastic insert that fits in the wing, what is the procedure to follow? Glue the metal on to the plastic and then wrap with the cord if so what glue? Or epoxy the metal in place an then wrap and epoxy again. ....................Thanks

[Wildpig]

The second method sounds better to me. Epoxy-wrap with cord- epoxy again. Have not built the 400 series P-51 so I can't say for certain what works.

[Pauli72]

Use the good old Testors plastic model glue in the orange tube. It actually melts the plastic a little to make a stronger 'weld' contact. Crazy glue or epoxy will work, but I found they can prevent your gear wire from rotating freely if your making functioning retracts.

#1. Make sure your wires are correctly bent per Guillows layout/plan.

#2. If you're making the functioning retractable landing gears, go over those plans a few times. Be sure you have all the parts ready in 2 seperate builds. Left & right.

#3. Lay your bent landing gear wire into the vertical slot of the wire holder, apply the Testors orange glue to everywhere the plastic will meet the other plastic half, and put the other half on. Insert & push the shorter horizontal cross wire through. Clamp it tight and let it sit overnight. Double check that you followed the plans/blueprint EXACTLY. Left IS left, up IS up, forward IS forward, etc.

#4. Now you can wrap it all tightly with the thread from the kit. This thread is used more as a reinforcemrnt. Tie it off and add some glue ( any glue will work ) to secure the thread.

[Bill Gaylord]

Question: Attaching the metal wire to the plastic insert that fits in the wing, what is the procedure to follow? Glue the metal on to the plastic and then wrap with the cord if so what glue? Or epoxy the metal in place an then wrap and epoxy again. ....................Thanks

Just a thought: If you're flying these planes, it's difficult to avoid bending the gear when landing. One thought is to make them removable. I've built enough GWS kits to have a stock of their plastic gear mounts, which have worked well in a number of these Guillows warbirds. The gear is locked in place by using nylon gear clips, cut a bit past the halfway point such that they create a lock. Of course the other half of the clip is then thrown out. Guillows uses enough formers in the wings such that the base of the gear mount will fit across two formers. Notch the formers so that the mounting plate installs flush, and then add something like laminated stringers to reinforce the formers, under the gear mounting plate running the former length.